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Five Useful iOS Features Still Unavailable to International Users

I wish Americans would stop referring to me as an “international” user. I haven’t travelled internationally for the last 5 years

When I fill out online forms, I have to indicate whether my number is “US” or “international.” From my perspective, I my number is neither US, nor international: I have a local number.

I think a better title for this article would be “Five Useful iOS Features Still Unavailable to Users Outside of the USA.”
 
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svrf said:
Don't forget Apple Maps biking routes... or ride sharing... or transit card support (though that's avaibale for Japan and China as well)... or the detailed landmark visuals... or... (and that's all just in Maps!!!!)
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These are available outside the US. Here in Canada we have biking routes and ride sharing.
 
I’d love Apple Card in the UK even if the % reward cash back wasn’t market leading as long as it gave discount on buying a new Mac / iPhone.

Makes sense for Apple otherwise they will be giving American Express / Visa / Mastercard anywhere from 3 to 6%.
 
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I don't see how they could bring some features to France for instance since credit cards work very differently here than in the US.
Apple Cash would be nice though, a lot of different companies could be sherlocked by Apple with this.

But the feature we miss the most is being able to pay devices 20% less for no reason! 😅
 
The only relevant thing here is the encrypted iCloud and that's a feature that is long overdue... all cloud data must be encrypted with on-device only keys. Whatever leaves the device needs to be encrypted. Period.
That this isn't possible for mail and calenders isn't true actually. However, legacy clients won't work.
Apple would simply need to encrypt all incoming data with the users public key.

IDs working in other countries using an App and dynamic QR codes (handing off one-time tokens for the officer or whoever checks the ID to check the authenticity)

Clean Energy charging is useless on the phone. This is a feature needed on electric cars or respectively their chargers. Protocols for that are implemented already. It just needs to be switched on...

Credit Cards... there are enough of them, especially debit cards. Just another debit card with an Apple on it...

Apple Cash sounds unnecessary... At least in Europe... I can as well paste my IBAN in the chat. Often the transfer is instant these days.
 
Kar98 said:
Yeah don’t feel bad. Those features lifted aren’t actually all that useful.

No ID in wallet in most states.
No look around in most areas.
Advanced data protection, need a person you trust who is also on the Apple train (wife uses Android)
Clean energy charging, silly. Phone goes on the night stand charger at night or on car or desk charger during the day when I need it and it better charge!
And I already have all the credit cards I need.
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You need a new wife 😂
 
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BvizioN said:
Yep, our American friends do get MORE for LESS from Apple than us.
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Always been that way, and it won’t change, so don’t give it any attention. It will only upset you.
National Taxes and a lot of reasons are behind. Apple can’t affect all of it either.
mtrm said:
And don’t forget Siri. To this day I’m still waiting for it to be available in European Portuguese… I currently use it in English but that severely limits its functionality, as I can’t really dictate messages or notes to Siri.
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I don’t even use Siri at all to this day. I don’t want to spend my time teaching a tech infant with dyslexia and various other problems any Swedish.
I have given it a try, and people look at me wondered and laughed at what idiot I have to put up with.
She might be better today, but I’m doing absolutely better without her.
As I use both English and Swedish on my devices, Siri can’t handle that anyway, so she’s still a useless fkng mor#on to me.
 
Charging restraint for a ~5-10W device that's already losing ~2W due to wireless charging to save a minuscule amount of carbon in a country well-known for its carbon-consuming SUVs and its people consuming ~200 MWh per person per year...

I find that amusing. I wonder what would be the break-even time of the carbon emitted for developing and testing that feature versus the amount of carbon it would have kept outside the atmosphere.
 
I don’t care about most of them - Apple Card will struggle in most of European countries because we don’t use credit nearly as much, Apple Cash will struggle because so many good local solutions already exist (including easy bank transfers almost everywhere), Clean Energy Charging is also pointless as hardly any place here has dedicated ‘clean’ times and many countries are getting to the point of majority of electricity being clean.

IDs might be useful but I suspect many countries will take decade to support them. It will take a long time to convince them that Apple is private enough too.

And the only feature I really care about - Advanced Data Protection - is coming soon anyway.
 
Here in the UK we have had companies like Curve for many years! who offer rewards on payments made with any of the cards you add to your account, you can also go back in-time and switch past payments from the card you originally used! to any other of your cards, VIP airport lounge access, metal physical card, etc etc. 99.9% of UK banks have instant transfers between people, with one of mine even detecting people next to me in person, so we can transfer money without even exchanging bank details.. I think Apple Card/Cash has zero value here in the UK, and Apple know this. There are way too many other fintech companies here in UK and Europe to compete with. Apple Card would at most just be a status/branding thing. Google “Curve card” or “Starling Bank”, Starling allow you to create 5 virtual debit cards, where you can move X amount to that card! Then delete after purchase (online only). Then make 5 more the next week! No limit on max amount allowed. Also have Euro accounts, Business accounts all in same app where I can switch between and instant transfer between work and personal etc. These features for me at least, are worth way more than what Apple Card would offer. Just saying. EDIT, the latter also offer physical cards for kids, and a separate “connected card” with a 200 pound max balance at any one time, which can only be used in person, for cases if you need someone to purchase groceries or whatever. Also 24/7 support via app. And loads of plug-ins that can even help doing your tax returns. (Do not work for either btw! Just commenting here, as Apple offer non of these basic services).
 
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vinesy said:
I wish Americans would stop referring to me as an “international” user. I haven’t travelled internationally for the last 5 years

When I fill out online forms, I have to indicate whether my number is “US” or “international.” From my perspective, I my number is neither US, nor international: I have a local number.

I think a better title for this article would be “Five Useful iOS Features Still Unavailable to Users Outside of the USA.”
Click to expand...
Agreed! But at least we have stopped saying “foreign” countries 🤪
 
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Well, there are many services and features not available here in Iceland. For example, cycling directions in maps would be nice to have, and Siri! We also never got the iTunes Store, though Apple Music finally arrived in 2020.
Despite that, we do have digital driver's licenses in the Wallet app (even works on Apple Watch!) as well as on Android: https://island.is/en/digital-drivers-license
So, IDs in the Wallet app are clearly not a US only thing. Maybe there are NFC features with these US IDs that we don't have?
 
  • Apple Card, no thanks.
  • Apple Cash, no thanks.
  • ID‘s in Apple Wallet, no thanks.
  • Advanced Data Protection, very late to the party, yes makes sense.
  • Clean Energy Feature, nonsense.
 
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And with Apple these days there is even worse, like the new dictation experience (auto-punctuation, possibility to use both keyboard and dictation simultaneously,…) and Visual Lookup that have been localized and are available in France, Germany and Italia… but not available in Switzerland even though we speak the same languages… So annoying!!!
 
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AppleFan735 said:
The problem is that Apple sucks at scaling services. Their approach to services is the idea of "hand picked curated playlist" instead of an algorithmic approach that could scale world wide. Don't even get me started on Maps. Look at how good Google is at scaling all their services world wide. Apple with their "hand crafted" approach, as if they're selling Italian leather shoes are just downright annoying. They should embrace a more scalable, algorithmic, ML/AI aproach to things and scale their services world wide much faster.
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Totally! That’s their big issue… Also it seems as if internally they still behave as a UsA-centered startup, lots of feature seem to be developed by small teams in Cupertino (so english only), then loudly introduced at a WWDC… and then everybody at Apple forgets about it (take the phone voice mail transcription still english-only, or visual lookup still not available in Switzerland for no reason as it is the case in France, Italia and Germany)
 
SirAnthonyHopkins said:
It's really mad going to Berlin – the hipster capital of Europe! – and finding it stuck in about 2006 in terms of digitalisation. So many places don't even take card payments, nevermind Apple Pay. You expect Germany to be one of the leading places for this kind of thing but compared with the UK it's somehow miles behind.

Miles and miles in front on most other things, sure...
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Make that 1996…
 
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